How Gmail’s New Grid View Affects Email Marketing

Gmail started treating advertising messages differently a while back with the Promotions tab, and now a new in-process feature takes that approach a step further by putting a big emphasis on visual content.

Google recently announced that it is gradually introducing a new grid view arrangement for incoming promotional emails. This feature will enable images from those messages to be grouped together and displayed in a sort of catalog type of arrangement. The goal is to make it easier for users to quickly scan the offerings and zero in on items that would interest them.

This feature is just in trial mode right now, meaning only those who apply to be in the test run (and get accepted) will see the grid view for the time being. But if it proves to be popular, it likely will be rolled out on a larger scale soon.

For marketers, of course, this presents a whole additional set of challenges. Now it will be more important than ever to have great images that will quickly catch someone’s eye. While you may invest a lot of time and effort on crafting the perfect content, your target audience may not even see it if the image doesn’t attract their attention enough to motivate them to read the message.

In addition, it will also be critical to pay attention to ALT text, as that will let readers still have at least a basic idea of the content even if the image doesn’t display correctly.

Google has added a section on its Developers site with tips on how you should arrange your content so as to provide the best experience for recipients who are using the grid view.

This is just one of many issues you need to consider when planning your email marketing strategy, but fortunately we can handle all of these challenges for you.